NASA's giant flower-shaped starshade could help find Earth-like exoplanets

Researchers at NASA and Caltech are developing a large, flower-shaped "starshade" spacecraft designed to physically block starlight from distant stars. The device would allow space telescopes to directly image exoplanets orbiting those stars, including potentially Earth-like worlds. Blocking the overwhelming glare of a parent star is one of the biggest challenges in exoplanet observation.